We Watched Netflix's New Sci-Fi Show The OA So You Don't Have To

The OA arrived to little fanfare this last Friday, largely due to the fact few people even knew it existed until trailers arrived early next week, some in... less well-advised formats. Its first and only trailer was cryptic and bewildering, as was its release date: just three days later.

Turns out, sure, The OA is cryptic and bewildering, but not in any meaningful, powerful, or necessarily earned way.

Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij devised the show together, with Marling starring and Batmanglij directing. The two also worked together on 2013's middling The East, and 2011's extremely good Sound Of My Voice, which more and more feels like a frustrating outlier of quality. A gentle accident. There are themes and elements carried over from each of these projects: Marling invariably plays a hypnotic, borderline ethereal character with a mysterious past. Also, across the board, these things are sincere as hell, guys. This works just fine in a taught, psychological thriller movie which can introduce and tie its threads within two hours. When it comes to a sprawling, eight-hour binge-watch show, it leeches enthusiasm fast.

The OA's first hour introduces Prairie Johnson, who one day suddenly reappears having been missing for seven years. She can offer no account for her whereabouts at the time, with only mysterious, cryptic scarring on her back as any kind of clue. Oh, and she can now see, having been blind for years at the time she went missing. Her parents, just happy to have her home, comply with her wishes not to speak to investigators or stay in the hospital. Naturally, her behavior increasingly looks a little... off. Without explanation, she asks not to be called Prairie but rather "The OA." She also spends a lot of time recording video messages for someone named "Homer."

With internet access restricted, she enlists the help of the troubled community Bad Boy, Steve, whose respect she earns by subduing his attack dog via the unique measure of biting it back when it comes for her. Yeah. He's obviously interested in what she has up her sleeve, and so she asks him to meet her at an abandoned house late at night, with at least four other people in tow. They need to be "strong", she says, and to leave their front doors open when they come, explaining, "You have to let me in."

The opening credits on the first episode roll after one hour, establishing this as 1) the longest cold open in the history of recorded time, and 2) a show that desperately yearns to impress. It is a neat little move, but has the unfortunate effect of rendering most of what we've seen... nearly irrelevant? And from then on The OA becomes a very different show, almost entirely for the worse.

Light spoilers: From Episode Two onward, the vast bulk of the story is focused on the life of Prairie/OA in flashback, meted out to her new entourage, all of whom are members of Steve's high school (four students, and an impressive Phyllis Smith as Betty Broderick-Allen, a teacher). There are forays back into modern Michigan, with some very, very disappointingly perfunctory side plots. Prairie's relationship with her parents gets a few scenes, as does the growth of Steve, whose "invisible self" appears to be flourishing due to his nightly meetings with Prairie.

And now, some big ol' spoilers: OK, so it goes something like this: Prairie, experiencing a near-death experience as a child, lost her sight (it was taken by angels) and became a person of interest for Hap, who keeps NDE survivors on his basement and experiments on them in order to try to map out the afterlife. After another NDE, Prairie is told by her spirit guardian, Khatun (the show really gets dangerously close to "Eastern Mystic" territory here) that, in actuality, she and her other NDE pals are angels, and Prairie is "The Original," which, as I come to understand it, means nothing. Through many more NDEs (Hap subjects the prisoners to countless deaths and revivals), they learn things called "the movements" from the other side. There are five in total, which, when performed together by five people, open up a portal allowing for interdimensional travel, ostensibly allowing them to escape. A side effect of NDEs is amnesia, so the angels mark their bodies with symbols reminding them of how to perform the movements, hence Prairie's scarring.

The opening credits on the first episode roll after one hour—and from then on The OA becomes a very different show, almost entirely for the worse.

In fairness, it's watchable. It's interesting. The first seven episodes, silly and hokey as all hell, intrigue. A love subplot between OA and her fellow captive, Homer, is handled really nicely, and Jason Isaacs is brilliant as Hap.

Then, things go off the rails.

To call what happens in the final few minutes of The OA inexplicable would be disingenuous, but it's close. OA has previously told the others her plan, which is to teach them the movements in order to open a portal for her to travel through, rescuing Homer and the other angels. That is, until one day, with the ragtag Breakfast Club of OA disciples having one of their clandestine meetings in the school cafeteria, a figure appears in the background walking towards to school, assault rifle in tow.

For a show this sincere to use an out-of-the-blue school shooting as its climax is offensive, not least when the OA gang thwarts the shooter with The Movements, which, yes, looked silly before, but in this new context are laughable (if you're one of those people who laughs when absolutely horrified). Everything that came before it—the clear-eyed pleas to hear the prophet out, the casual and steady use of "angels" in the show—suddenly feels even a little insidious, and certainly unearned.

A kind way to describe The OA's first (and presumably) only season is as an "ambitious failure." Only the show itself is not kind, despite its pretensions. The OA is an inept, bumbling parable, played somehow with a completely straight face. A passion project which somehow lacks any hint of passion. Brevity and clarity are clearly not its strong suits, so allow me: It sucks.

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